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Aboriginal party eyed in Australia

7 May 2001 - DARWIN, Australia: It has been more than three decades since Australia's Aborigines were granted the vote. But the island continent's original inhabitants can boast only one current federal senator and have shown little interest in a political system that long spurned them.

Frustrated by his people's lack of political clout, Aborigine Maurie Ryan Japarta plans to form the country's first black party, the Aboriginal Political Party, for this year's federal election.

"A lot of people have given me support verbally, but I don't have money backing behind me. All I have in my favour is the rightness of saying that it is time the Aboriginal people represented themselves," he said in tropical northern Australia.

Japarta must gather 500 members before the party can be registered but is hoping a proposal that has been talked about in the Northern Territory for more than 20 years can at last become a reality.

"I will have a victory when it is created, because it is way, way overdue," Japarta said.

Australia's federal parliament has one Aboriginal member, Aden Ridgeway, who became the second Aborigine in the parliament's 100-year history when he was elected to the Senate after standing for the small Australian Democrats party in 1998.

Former Northern Territory Senator Bob Collins, a strong supporter of increased Aboriginal representation, said across all of Australia's federal, state and territory parliaments he could count just four indigenous members.

"I think that's it... which is an absolute, bloody disgrace," he said.

Aborigines account for about 400,000 of Australia's 19 million population and are among its most disadvantaged, dying an average 20 years younger than non-indigenous Australians.

Japarta, whose mother is Aboriginal and father Irish, is part of the "Stolen Generation" of mixed race indigenous people who as children were removed from their parents under a government assimilation policy.

Aboriginal people were denied the vote until a referendum in 1967. Before then they were treated under flora and fauna rules by the collection of former British penal colonies, which pursued a "White Australia" immigration policy. But it has proven hard to get indigenous people involved in politics.

Collins said that from the drudgery of grass-roots branch meetings to often tedious parliamentary debate, politics was a turn-off for traditional Aborigines. Authority in traditional Aboriginal communities lies with elders, not elected officials.

"A lot of Aboriginal people do consider that it is white fellah business and it is not something that interests them," he said.

Minority rights are not seen as a vote winner in Australia. And standing for parties with policies often at odds to the Aboriginal agenda is also a challenge for indigenous people hoping to drive change from within the system.

Pat Anderson, who made a run as a Senate pre-selection candidate for the opposition Labour Party in the Northern Territory, said she was thought of as naive when she made her ambitions known.

"Aboriginal people who do put their hand up do cop a little bit of criticism from people in the struggle saying why do you bother," she said.

She lost her pre-selection battle last month by four votes. But despite her defeat, she is not convinced an Aboriginal party is the answer to the lack of representation.

The idea has been floated for about 20 years in the Northern Territory, an area about twice the size of Texas where Aboriginal people account for about a quarter of the territory's 196,000 population.

Sceptics say it is divisive and would marginalize Aboriginal issues in Australia.

They point out that Aborigines are not united nationally, and with many indigenous communities living in remote communities hundreds of kilometres from main towns, the logistics and cost of marshalling the Aboriginal vote would be daunting.

Source: China Daily

Further information: election 2001

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